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<title>Beautiful by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129248">Beautiful</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene'>ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:15:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,501</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>As a courtesy to Harry's friendly relationship with the Malfoy family, she invites Narcissa to her wedding day... Sometimes falling in love happens when you see someone in a new light. Or her wedding dress. About to walk to her kind but totally-wrong-for-her husband-to-be. Asked by delirious_comfort via tumblr</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Beautiful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delirious_Comfort/gifts">Delirious_Comfort</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Let’s try to do this. I’m already writing the author’s note and I’m feeling paralyzed. Heh. This is going well.</p>
<p>In any case, let’s see if I still have it in me, alright? Fingers crossed and eternal apologies if this sucks. Brain doesn’t seem to work properly ever since I stopped writing fic prompts.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She had considered on not answering to the invitation, fingers curled around the tasteful paper in where the names had been written with ink that would change from gold to black if she decided to RSVP. She wouldn’t have gone as far as admitting she was nervous, her magic pooling around her, climbing through the walls of a manor that felt far too big and far too constricting at the same time ever since the end of the war. Yet, as she had smoothed the invitation, careful on how her nails scraped the very corners, she hadn’t quite been able to shake the tightening sensation at the back of her throat.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Many words had been spilled about how the magic community have taken the news of the war being over, many more regarding the incessant trials, the perception of them being too much and yet not enough for the public. Her story, the one that should have been a note forgotten in the wind of time about how she had knelt next to Harry Potter and decided to lie through her teeth, mentioned far too much for her liking until the words and the actions had blurred together in a vortex of memories that she wasn’t entirely too sure were hers anymore to have. If she now closed her eyes tight enough, after two anniversaries of that day, she still could smell the musky scent of the forest around them: air tinted green and red due to the spells, energy blast sweeping at every robe that moved in unison in order to aid the one they had called their Dark Lord as she was instructed to check if the Boy who had survived still breathed. She could remember her decision, her question, the gritted way in where she had gotten her answer.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She had been called brave by some, multifaceted by others, she had been called traitor, given the title of someone who would betray anyone. She had never felt inspired. Nor righteous. She had done what she needed to do at the time. Which, in the end, had been the same reason why she had looked up towards where portraits of old names of the House of Malfoy had hung and, while pressing her lips into a thin line, had murmured her agreement to the invitation, the swirling ink transforming its color the silent yet deafening answer she got from her final decision.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It wasn’t, she had considered while perusing through the clothes she would wear to the wedding as if she felt compelled to say yes. Not exactly, the words in the invitation on itself had been polite, perfectly thought. But she knew that, in the same way, she hadn’t needed to be present in every trial performed to what had been the Death Eaters after hers and Lucius had passed -with him being sent to Azkaban- and yet she had attended  them all out of that very same sense of duty, showcasing that she was, indeed, someone else beside being her now ex-husband shadow, she needed to go all the same. For herself. For the boy, now a man, that kept on including her as one that needed to be taken for everything she was and not merely a surname she had married into.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It was, to put it simple, baffling.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She had, also, not quite expected a similar treatment from the others who had actually stood next to Harry Potter. The young man was far too kind sometimes but she hadn’t seen beyond that night the one back at Hogwarts and when the dust had settled her mind had been too full to actually consider what her actions could warrant beyond, maybe, a smidge of some levity on her own sanction. She had been wrong. And the fact that Hermione Granger had invited her to her own wedding was something that still murked her mind the moment she traveled to where, if she had understood it correctly, Bill and Fleur had once married as well: The Burrow.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She had been there a few times already. Always outside, always careful, back when Draco himself had been invited with the same brittle carefulness for everyone involved as his boy also mended his relationship out of that same sense of duty, he seemed to have had the day he had told Bellatrix how the hexed boy in front of him could be or could not be the one they all were seeking to bring forward to the Dark Lord. She had followed those days, a year in after the war, with the same curling nerves at the end of her throat. Yet when his son had shared with her his growing relationship with the dark-haired one her happiness for him had been genuine. Because atop everything else, Draco would forever and always be her son.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her train of thought, the memories of those days, the scandal the news had brought into the magical community, were halted as she took into the changed setting of the Burrow. The open field now filled to the brim, the grass seemingly to be under a spell so their colors would mimic the sky in all its oranges and purples as the sun settled above them all. She kept to herself, smiling politely, making small talk to the ones who greeted her, as poised, as careful, as ever. She hugged Draco the moment she spotted him, tightly yet quickly as the scent of sweet flowers filled the air, traipsing over the ones who, in unison, turned all towards the groom as the ceremony began its initial notes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>If Narcissa Malfoy -now Black- had learned something was how not to expect anything, how feelings were difficult at times, how things never quite went in the direction one expected to. The power of one’s magic wasn’t rooted in the fact of how much one witch could change what came in her way but how quick and resilient said witch was to those very same changes. Moving like a spell, unable to be grasped, rather than the very physical wand that could or could not hold a hit, was something she had needed to understand and then rely on as she saw everything she had believed once fall around in jagged shapes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And yet, when the initial fanfare began to play and she saw the wife-to-be walk down the aisle, walk past her in whites and notes of gold that peppered the edges of her dress as the very same metal had condensed in vaporous lace, the blonde witch felt her own breath being stolen away.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She had talked with Hermione a few times before, always smidges of conversations that felt as if they could be larger specks into the very intelligent woman’s mind. She had felt interested in the way the younger witch hold herself, by the way she always commanded a very different kind of power she herself had done back when Malfoy Manor had been full and a light atop everyone who had considered themselves to be better. That very kind of thing that could not be quite taught and yet it was not merely natural. The brunette had it on spades and she had always felt such pull whenever she was able to get a few minutes with her. A mere comforting interest that she had felt some other times, on her younger days.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Yet, the dress, the way she kept her eyes ahead, her lips parted, the blossoming red on her cheeks. It came far too sudden for her, a hit and a gasp, a murmur that didn’t quite escape her lips as she swallowed, the most obvious, physical reaction of her body hidden away beneath her clothes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Narcissa tended to prefer to use her wording as specific as possible, as right and perfectly well-put as humanly able. Yet, the word <em>beautiful</em> lost its meaning in a slight, slanted way, as if she looked at it through a murky, dirty glass.  Blinking quickly, regaining herself, she looked back to the groom, the redhead young man. The third part of the trio, the one who had eyed her with less kindness on his eyes for the longest of times. The one who, in the end, had turned out to be the most comforting one amidst the faces who looked wearily but trusting her due to some words Harry Potter had said time and time again. The Weasley family would probably always superimpose the image of her sister, of Bellatrix, of the death eater, with her own shadow. A truth she was ready to admit and a weight to bear. And, still, when she looked at the man that now glanced back at Hermione as she slowly came in front of him, she saw the kindness that he professed for her, and the careful way in where the brunette witch took on his offered hand, a gentle squeeze making muscles tremble and jump against the dying light.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She was beautiful.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And she needed to leave.</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Del, love ya'</p></blockquote></div></div>
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